Got to Catch Them All!
by The Inscrutable Anon
Summary: There's a new game in Ponyville. The game to end all games. But as it culminates, will it be game over for Button Mash?


**Author's Note:**

"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die." - The Nameless City- H.P. Lovecraft

"Gotta Catch Em All!"- The first theme song of the English dubbed Pokemon Anime series.

Thunder boomed, and lightning skittered across the sky, when a thoroughly soaked Twilight Sparkle opened the door once more to Love Tap's cottage.

Love Tap stopped her pacing at the sound of the opening door. She all but galloped toward Twilight, her eyes wide, and tinged with red. Crying was not something she did often. It took quite a lot to unnerve her, but her son had been missing for two days now, and her staunch resolve had all but crumbled.

"Did you find him?" She all but yelled, as an exhausted Twilight made her way into the living room. "Please tell me you found him! Or at least… at l-least his r-re-"

"Stop!" Twilight said wearily, as she sank down into one of the living room chairs, uncaring of the fact the she was still soaking wet.  
"My locator spell tracked him deep into the Everfree forest, then it just… stopped. I cast it again and again, but it just didn't show, well, anything."

"I KNEW it!" Love Tap wailed, "He's gone! Dead! Some monster from the Everfree killed my little colt!"

"No. No, wait!" Twilight said, rising to comfort the grief stricken mare. "I don't think that he's dead," she said, looking Love Tap in the eye. "I really don't. Listen to me, if some animal or monster killed him, my spell would have led me to his remains, or to the beast that had swallowed him. But it didn't. It led me to a clearing in the middle of the forest. There were hoofprints all over the place, small hoofprints. It looked like there were dozens of colts or fillies there at one point, but all I could find was this."

Twilight held up a small device before Love Tap using her magic.

"It was well hidden, in the hollow of a fallen tree, far away from the clearing. I would never have found it if it hadn't made a faint pull on my locator spell. I think this must have belonged to Button Mash, am I right?"

Love Tap reached out and took the device in her hoof.

"Yes, this is Button's all right. It's his personal gaming system. He uses it to play games, and record messages, and talk to all his gaming friends. You say it was hidden in a log? That's not like Button, he'd sooner saw off his own hoof than let anything ever happen to his My-Pone."

"It was definitely hidden." Twilight said firmly. "beyond a doubt he was trying to keep it hidden, but from who? And why? Wait, you said this… My-Pone was it, can record messages. Maybe that was why he hid it away. Do you know how to make it work?"

"Yes, absolutely," Love Tap replied. "My husband is the one that designed this model in the first place. Just give me a moment. Button always has his My-Pone password protected to keep other ponies from seeing what he is up to."

"Will you be able to figure out what the password is?" Twilight asked.

"I'm his mother Twilight, of COURSE I know what all his passwords are."

Love Tap set the My-Pone on the counter and carefully typed in 'S-w-e-e-t-i-e B-e-l-l-e-x-o-x-o'. Instantly the screen sprang to life.

"That's my little colt for you." Love Tap murmured, as she began to sort through Button's inbox and outbox. It only took her a moment to find what she was looking for in the 'Drafts' folder. A draft labeled 'To Mom', dated the day before yesterday.

"You were right Twilight!" Love Tap said excitedly, "he DID leave a message!"

Twilight quickly moved over to look over Love Tap's shoulder, "what is it?" She asked. "What does it say?"

"Dear Mom," The message began. "I think I have found a good hiding place. Hopefully this will all be over soon, and I can sneak my way back home, but just in case something happens, I'm leaving you this message. I'm sure you or Dad can unlock my My-Pone, just like I'm sure that you'll get some pony with magic, probably the princess, to track me down."

"You were right Twilight. Button WAS hiding from something, or someone. He left this for me, to tell me where he is. He knew we would come looking for him!" Love Tap said excitedly, her mind grasping at this one slender thread of hope.

"Read it out loud, please," Twilight asked, "any information at all will be helpful."

"First off, I'm planning to hide in the remains of the Castle of the Two Sisters. Sweetie Belle took me there once before with the Crusaders, when Zecora took them out gathering herbs. Don't worry, we just sat on the steps while Zecora told us a story. Anyway, I think it's gonna be the best place I can find to hide, but just in case something happens, I'll hide my My-Pone someplace else so they won't find it."

"That could be it!" Twilight said excitedly. "The residual magic in Celestia and Luna's old castle may have been interfering with my locator spell! Does he say anything else?"

Love Tap resumed reading.

"Before you come looking for me though, you need to know about what's going on. I'm… I'm scared mom. Really, really, scared. There are THINGS out here. I don't know what they are. They have like an octopus head with a face full of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, and long, narrow wings. Their skin is all green and black, and they have an odd number of red eyes, but none of them look exactly the same. And they speak. But not like we do. I didn't record any of it. YOU CAN'T LISTEN TO IT! It does something to you when you hear it. It makes you feel funny. The bad kind of funny. I tried to do a speech to text recording of some of it so you could get an idea. Here is what came out."

" **Grah'n nog! Y- athg ah 'bthnk. C-ch' ah.** **Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn**..."

"Ancient R'lyehian," Twilight whispered, her eyes widening with growing unease.

"What was that?" Love Tap asked, not looking away from her son's message.

"N-nothing" Twilight forced out, trying not to let fear creep into her voice. "What else does the message say."

"Anyway mom, I need to tell you what happened. You have to stop it. You can't let it spread anywhere else. Please mom, you gotta promise me… no matter what happens to me, PROMISE that you will stop it!"

"Okay sweetie," Love Tap said, tears forming in the corners of her eyes, "Mommy promises."

"I guess I'd better start at the beginning. It was about three weeks ago. Some of the kids at school had been talking about this new game you could put on your My-Pone. It was called Ponymon Hunt, and was made by a company called Pedantic. I looked up the company name, all I could find out about it was that it was listed as a subsidiary of Dr. Disco Incorporated. Anyway, it was supposed to be the coolest game out there, so I had to check it out.  
The idea was, you could use the camera in your My-Pone to hunt for these creatures called Ponymon out in the real world. You would look thru your camera at someplace, and see a ponymon on the screen. There were supposed to be hundreds of different kinds that randomly spawned all over the place. Which was pretty cool. The other cool part was, once you caught one, you could use it to battle other ponymon, and make them stronger, or even evolve them into new types of ponymon.  
There were also these things called 'ponystops', where you could get items to use to help catch ponymon. Any famous local building could be a ponystop. The mayor's office was one. Twilight's Castle was another. The other thing that was out there were places called 'ponymon gyms'. You could use your ponymon to take over a gym, and then put your own ponymon inside it to defend it. Also it randomly could get taken over by a raid boss, which is like this huge powerful ponymon, that would take you, and several of your friends together, to have a chance of beating it. But then if you DID beat it, you had a chance at catching it, so like every time anypony saw a raid boss, we would all message each other and rush over and try to beat it. It sounds like a lot of fun. And it was. But mom, this is what I'm trying to warn you about.  
Okay, so what happened was, I was leaving school late because of that detention I had from when I got caught being passed a note from Sweetie Belle. (I don't wanna talk about that right now okay?) Anyway, so I was coming home, and had my My-Pone out looking for ponymon, when I got a message that a raid boss was up. It was still before dark, so I figured I had time to beat it before I went home, so I looked up the location.  
It was showing up in the Everfree forest, which was strange because there had never been a gym in there before. Another strange thing was the boss egg was black and green, and there were no stars above it to show how strong it was. IT WAS A NEW BOSS! A new ponymon raid boss had spawned! And the countdown on the timer was in thirty minutes!  
I quickly sent messages to all of my friends, and began following the map on my Ponymon Hunt toward where the egg was. I wasn't too worried about going into the Everfree in the daytime. The map in the game would lead me to where I was going, and I could use the gps (global pony sensor), in my My-Pone to find my way back out. A few of my friends messaged me back, saying they were already on their way there, this got me more excited, and I picked up my pace.  
I made it to the edge of the Everfree out behind Fluttershy's place. It was really quiet for some reason. Normally when you get near her cottage, you can hear all sorts of animal sounds. This time though, it was totally silent. Weird.

There was a trail leading into the forest, it didn't match my map exactly, but I thought I could follow it until I absolutely had to break off from it. I'll never get used to the Everfree. It's just so different from everywhere else. It looks like a jungle level from an outer space video game. All the plants are different, so are the animals. I've been in it before, but not by myself. I was a little nervous, but I knew my friends were somewhere up ahead, and we could all come back out together.

I came to a point where I had to leave the path I was following. It looked like some other pony had done the same thing, because there was a faint trail through the tall grass near where I was about to turn. It was in line with my map, so I started following it.

The grass kept getting taller the further I went, taller than any pony could see over. Soon all I could see was the faint trail ahead of me. The forest around me had gotten darker. I knew sundown was still over an hour away, but the sun had dipped below the top of the tree line, and was casting long shadows across the grass. I heard sounds in the grass. Movement. Like something… things… were traveling somewhere out of sight. I stopped, and after a moment the sounds stopped as well. I started to get a little worried, I knew there were all sorts of creatures in the Everfree. But looking at the map, I was closer to the raid, than to try and go back, and I knew my friends couldn't be too far ahead. I started moving forward again, thankfully, I didn't hear any more sounds.  
Gradually the grass began to thin, thank goodness! I came out of the field and saw a well worn path. The dust had been recently disturbed, and I could see a lot of colt sized hoofprints. I was on the right track! I let out a long breath I hadn't realized I had been holding. I shook my head in relief, it was all right. I'd catch up to my friends, beat a new raid boss, and have a cool story to tell Sweetie Belle. (Leaving out the parts where I was scared of course).  
I started down the path. It winded it's way through tall ancient looking trees. They were all bent and gnarled, and their leaves looked funny. It got darker as I got further into the woods, and I started getting this strange feeling. It's really hard to describe. It's like I wasn't quite… right with the world around me. Like I wasn't quite in sync? I know that doesn't make any sense, but that's what it felt like.

I checked the map, the raid wasn't much further away, and the path I was on seemed to be taking me right toward it. So I made my way deeper inside.  
I began to notice changes in the plants around me. It's not an easy thing to notice in the Everfree, when everything looks so strange, but I could tell that something wasn't quite right about them. They looked sickly, and stunted, and the colors! The colors were… off. There were reds that didn't quite look red, oranges that you could only call orange because there wasn't another word for it, and greens and blacks that made me just not want to look at them. It was like every part of my being was abhorred by them y'know? Well no, you couldn't know. Not unless you saw them.  
It got to be really hard to walk past them, and that feeling that I wasn't right, got worse and worse. I was just about to give up on the whole thing when I heard voices up ahead. Pony voices! I looked down at the map, and saw I was almost there, just up ahead, but the raid egg had already hatched. The raid was starting! I took a deep breath, and ran as fast as I could forward, doing my best not to look at anything but the path. A moment later I burst out of the forest and into a clearing.  
It looked like every Ponymon player in Ponyville was here! Colts, fillies, even the grown-ups had come out for the raid. They were all talking excitedly, and looking toward the center of the clearing.  
In the real world, there was nothing there, just a bare patch of ground, but on my My-Pone, there was a huge black archway spotted with dark green, nothing like any gym I had ever seen before. Where there would normally be a raid boss, there was only a black misty void, and below that the familiar 'battle?' icon. I quickly hit it, and it opened to the raid lobby screen.  
There was the familiar sight of the raid lobby, and there was my character icon, next to all the others. I quickly scrolled around, looking for my friends, and saw to my relief that we were all in the same raid. But then I noticed something odd. Normally you could only have a many as twenty ponies in a raid, that was the maximum allowed. But as I scrolled around I saw that there were almost a hundred ponies in my raid, it must be every pony here! Wow! How tough was this raid boss? We were all eagerly looking around as the timer counted down toward zero. Anticipation was mirrored on every face. Finally the count ran out, and the raid began.  
At least that was what was supposed to happen. Normally we would all switch to a screen which showed the raid boss in the center, and all of our ponymon surrounding it, ready to attack. But this wasn't what was happening.  
Instead what we saw on the screen was the large archway, still engulfed in that sickly black mist. Surrounding it was not our ponymon, but instead… ourselves? Not our avatars mind you, but our actual selves. I glanced up from my My-Pone to see that the real world perfectly mirrored what I was seeing on the screen, except for the archway and the mist. I was about to say something out loud, but then the WORDS came.  
Mom, I don't know quite how to describe what happened next, but I'll do my best.  
Words in a sickly green flecked with silver appeared in the archway. I can only call them 'words' because no other description applies. They were vile things, that were horrible to look at. I felt the urge to throw up start in the back of my throat. They were in a language I had never heard of or seen in books. I had never seen something so disgusting… so… obscene.  
To my horror, I heard the ponies around me beginning to recite those disgusting words. It took me a moment to realize that I was saying them as well. My mouth seemed to be moving of it's own violation. My eyes seemed drawn back to the screen like magnets were holding them in place, forcing me to stare at the horrible terrible words that kept pouring out of the portal.  
Then something happened. I want to say it was bad, I really do. In my head I knew it was bad, but at the time, that wasn't how it felt. It felt… it felt really good. But good in like a 'wrong' way. Like I wasn't supposed like it, but part of me inside really, really, did.  
It was the words. Suddenly they didn't look so hideous. It was like I had suddenly realized that I had been looking at them the wrong way. Now, the more I stared at them, the better I felt. It was like lightning running through me, I was feeling all tingly. Good, but bad at the same time. I loved it and hated it. I wanted to feel more and more of it.  
I was saying the words as fast as they were coming out of the portal on the screen, each word adding another tiny jolt of pleasure to my body. I didn't know what was going on anymore, but I didn't care! Everything had been reduced to the next word and the pleasure it gave me.  
It was amazing! I had never felt like this before! Nothing, no video game, no ice cream, not even Sweetie Belle made me feel like this. This was everything I ever wanted! Just to stand here forever, and say these wonderful words, and feel good forever…  
And then my My-Pone died.  
Everything suddenly stopped. I felt a sickening wrench as I came back to myself. For a moment all I could do was breathe, and look blankly at the dead My-Pone in my hoof.  
Ponymon Hunt puts a huge drain on the batteries of a My-Pone, and I had been playing on it during detention earlier. Suddenly I was the only pony their not chanting.  
As I came back to myself, I looked at the ponies around me. They were all still staring fixedly at their screens, their muzzles contorted as they continued to speak those terrible words. I tried to talk to the nearest pony, tried to take the My-Pone from his hooves, but he was like a stone statue, hard and unmovable, still facing toward the center of the clearing, like all the rest.  
It was then that I heard it. A sound, a tearing, rending, sound, much louder than the chanting around me. Almost against my will I turned toward that sound, toward the center of the clearing.  
Oh mom, of all the terrible things I had heard so far, this sound was the worst. It was a sound that didn't belong, a sound that should not be! As I looked toward the center of the clearing, I saw a jagged tear begin to form in the air itself. The sound was being made by that tear. It was reality itself being ripped apart. All that was right and orderly was being torn in two, and through that tear I could see the inexplicable landscape of… somewhere else.  
I stood there, frozen in place, as my mind frantically tried to make sense of what I was seeing. Sheer terror flowed trough me as every instinct in my body screamed at me that this was wrong, wrong, wrong! That what I was seeing didn't belong, should never exist here.  
Then, before my eyes, creatures began to emerge through the rift. They were vaguely bipedal, I couldn't tell if they were wearing hooded cloaks, or if that was a part of their bodies. Their limbs ended in branching tentacles, and they moved like they were not used to walking. Their faces were squid-like, but the eyes weren't in the right places, and there were too many of them.  
They came out of the portal and made their way to the ponies closest to them. When one of them got close to a pony, it would reach up to it's chest and rip a pulsating orange green blob off of itself. Then it would hold it forcefully against the forehead of a pony. I wanted to vomit as I saw dozens of small tendrils emerge from the blob and begin to burrow inside of the pony's skull. A moment later the pony fell silent, then it dropped it's My-Pone, and began to walk toward the portal. When he got near the tear, a huge black and green tentacle emerged from the portal, wrapping itself around it's victim, then it dragged him back through to the other side.  
Each of the squid-like beings was doing this, moving back and forth among the ponies closest to the portal. Being the last pony to arrive, I was all the way at the back, nearest to the edge of the forest. Slowly I began to ease my way backwards, never taking my eyes off of the creatures. This proved to be a mistake. My rear hoof came down on a large brittle branch, and a { **crack}** echoed across the clearing. I hoped against hope that it wasn't loud enough to be heard above the sounds of chanting ponies, but unfortunately, it was loud enough to be heard by the squid things, because, as one, all three heads turned to face me.  
My heart pounded in my chest as they began to move towards me in their shambling gait, their eyes glaring at me, alien and red. I turned and ran into the forest as fast as I could, galloping blindly, not looking for trials or paths, just trying to get away.  
Behind me I heard one of them shout something in their guttural alien tongue. Moments later they cry was taken up by the other two, as best I heard it was " **Li'hee n'gha ch'geb grah'n! Gnaiih ilyaa orr'e!** " I heard the sounds of them crashing into the forest after me.  
By now the sun had fully set, if their was a moon, the clouds had covered it along with the stars. The darkness was complete, and more than once I found myself bouncing off of limbs and trees that I couldn't see. I had no idea where I was, or where I was going. Suddenly, the ground under my hooves disappeared, and I found myself falling.  
I landed with a splash in water up to my shins, I had fallen off an embankment into a stream. I turned around and blindly felt along the surface of the sheer wall of the embankment. It was vertical, no hoofholds, or anything. I edged my way upstream, one hoof moving along the wall. I heard the sounds of rustling leaves and snapping branches above me. Somehow they were following me, and coming in the same direction.  
Moments later a putrid stench hit my nose, just as my hoof found a gap in the wall of clay it had been following. It was a burrow of some sort, and the stinking smell was coming from some scaly thing I had bumped into which was half in and half out of the hole. From the smell, it was obviously long dead, what it was, and what had killed it, unknown.  
The sounds of rustling were growing louder and closer. Holding my breath, I pulled the stinking carcass of whatever it was, free from the entrance of the burrow, and quickly squeezed myself past it, and backed my way inside.  
The smell was horrible, and I could feel things squirming underneath me. Maggots that were feasting on the dead body no doubt. Suddenly I heard a splash nearby, followed by another, then another. The squid things had landed in the stream, and they were close!  
I backed into the burrow as far as I could, squishing dozens of squirming bodies as I did so. The sound of splashing grew closer and closer, and I heard those awful voices once more. " **Ah grah'n, ah grah'n** ". They were right outside! I tried not to move, tried not to breathe as I heard them shuffling and splashing around. They seemed to be moving back and forth in front of the entrance to the burrow. I could hear the sound of their splashes approach and recede several times. It's like they were confused. They couldn't find me!  
Could it be the smell? Did they hunt by scent? Was the putrid stench I was covered in camouflage to them? It must be, because a short time later I heard them leave, splashing their way downstream.  
I waited there, not moving, for a while longer to be sure that they weren't coming back. Then I got out my spare battery, and booted up my My-Pone. I ignored the now hateful app icon for Ponymon Hunt, and opened up the map function. My gps showed me to be in a part of the forest that I had never been in. I searched around the map for anything, any landmark that I recognized. The nearest place was the palace of the two sisters, and it wasn't that far away. If I could make it there and hide until daylight, then I could make my way back home. The only problem was that according to my map, to get there I would have to travel back toward that horrible clearing before cutting away north.  
Which brings us to now. I'm writing all this down in case something happens to me. I'll hide my My-Pone as close to the clearing as I can, so that whomever comes after me can find it, then I will make my way to the palace of two sisters, and then hopefully in the morning, make my way home.  
I'm scared mom! Really, really scared, but it's the only thing I can think of to do. I love you mom, I love you and pop so much! And I really hope that you never have to read any of this, because that will mean I didn't make it.

Okay, I'm going now, but I'll see you soon okay?

Love,

Button Mash

Love Tap finished reading the message her son had left her.

"This was two days ago," she said, her voice beginning to break, "he should have made it back by now. He should BE here by now… if he… if he, was still alive." she said, collapsing onto a chair, fresh tears falling from her eyes.

A pale and fearful Twilight Sparkle came to her, and gently removed the My-Pone from her hooves. Twilight stared at the screen for a few moments before closing the message. It took her only a moment to find the icon for Ponymon Hunt.  
She had terrible suspicions, but she knew that the only way to confirm them was to turn on the game. Taking a deep breath, she did so. After a moment, a map screen sprang to life. Twilight zoomed it out as far as it would go, giving her a view of most of Ponyville.

"Sugarcube Corner, Fluttershy's cottage, Rarity's Boutique, my castle… Dear Celestia, they are everywhere."

"W-what?" Love Tap said, raising her head, "what are you talking about?"

Wordlessly Twilight turned the screen to face her. And she quickly understood. Every landmark, every home of somepony important, all of them had a gym icon on top of them now, with a boss egg that was black and green.

And all of the timers had just hit zero.


End file.
